Robotics-an efficient tool for laboratory automation

As part of a major upgrading of the Dyckerhoff AG, Amoneburg cement plant, Germany, a fully automated quality control and quality assurance system has been installed. The laboratory automation system is the robotics-based QCX/Robolab system. At the production laboratory, samples from nine automatic sampling points are brought by a pneumatic tube transport system to the industrial robot and distributed to sample preparation and analytical equipment. The robot-controlled analysis activity comprises X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, particle size distribution, and color measurement. The results are used for automatic process control applications. A number of manually operated analytical devices are connected to the system, allowing automatic analysis-data collection for activities like quality test of incoming and outgoing products, environmental protection, etc. Via a network, all analytical and associated production data from the production control system are automatically transferred to the central plant data management system